Car-Toon Powered by the voice of Bart Simpson, the animated The Kellys hits the pits at nascar.com

Television stars are often born in obscurity. We first met BartSimpson, for instance, in throwaway vignettes on The TraceyUllman Show. Just as that 1980s variety program launched TheSimpsons, the Web is introducing us in snippets to the titleclan of an animated race car series, The Kellys (whosecharacters are shown below). Created by SportsBlast, a companyfounded by Nancy Cartwright--the voice of Bart--the seriesdebuted on Sept. 26 on nascar.com, on which a three- tofour-minute episode premieres each Friday and is then archivedon the site.

The Kellys, which mixes drama and comedy, tells the story of aNASCAR family in transition. Racing veteran Joe Kelly hasrecently retired to manage his own team, but his lead driver andoldest son, Denny, has a knack for finding trouble on the track.Desperate, Joe brings in egomaniacal Italian Formula One driverArmani, all the while fighting off the claims of his daughter,Trish, that she's the best driver available. The series, whichoperates best in Shockwave Flash, will run until the end of theNASCAR season, in November, and is expected to resume when the2002 season begins in February. If it catches on, it might spinoff into a Saturday-morning television series.

Cartwright, who's the voice of seven-year-old Chip Kelly, formedSportsBlast a year and a half ago after determining that sportswas a relatively untapped area of animation. She and her team ofwriters have immersed themselves in NASCAR culture, hangingaround the pits at numerous events and two weeks ago even takingthe high-powered cars for a spin at California Speedway. "Oh, itwas awesome, man," says the 40-year-old Cartwright in her bestBart-ese. "I left my writers in the dust."

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